The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Drafting the NFL’s Best Coaches

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Robert Mays and The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue duke it out in a draft of the top 10 head coaches in the NFL. Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. Great show for you guys today. I wanted to do a top 10 coaches show because it's that time of year, and I always just find it. It's a really useful exercise, and I really like talking about coaches in that way

and really digging deep on them. And I couldn't think of a better person to do that with than our Rams writer here at the Athletic, the host of the Playcaller's podcast that ran on this feed last year. And that's Jordan Roder. Jordan has done a phenomenal job of covering the coaching landscape,

around the league. Obviously, she's gotten to watch a really good one up close and personal as our Rams writer and what Sean McVeigh has done over the last his entire tenure in Los Angeles, honestly. But she's done fantastic work along the coaching landscape outside of her time covering the Rams. So I thought that Jordan did an unbelievable job of offering insight into how these guys tick and who they are and what makes them special as she was ticking down her top 10 and figuring out who to put it in there. So very excited for you guys to hear about why Jordan had these folks on her top 10 list and why she had them ranked this way. But you know what? Let's just get to it. Joining us now, it is our Rams writer here at The Athletic and the creator of the new Finding Rams draft series that you guys should absolutely go check out that ran, I believe in May right after the draft happened.

That is a fantastic behind the scenes look at an entire year-long scouting process with the NFL team. It is Jordan Roderick. Jordan, really good to have you back. I'm glad to be back. We're going to have some fun today. I've been excited for this. So I wanted to do top 10 coaches, and I was trying to figure out how I wanted to do it, who I wanted to do it with. And we're going to do a draft today because I have decided that drafts are just the more dynamic way to do this. Rather than us listing off top tens, be like, oh, I had that guy's seventh and where do we talk about him?

And it just becomes a little bit naughty. So I think that drafts while gimmicky, there's a reason that they work. So we're going to draft coaches today. And I was thinking about who I wanted to have this discussion with. And I'm not sure there's anyone else in America who has thought more about NFL coaches in so many different ways over the last three or four years than you have. So the way that we both think about them, talk about them, it really does feel like we're often interested in the same things, where things are going. And I just figured we would have a very good time drafting against each other because our boards are probably pretty similar. And I think there's going to be a lot of competitive juice here. I know. I'm stoked.

I'm like pulling my game face on as we speak. speak, although you did, you were gracious. You gave me the first pick. So you're the guest. You deserve it. Yeah. No one will be surprised by who I select. However there, I did surprise myself as we, I went, I constructed my big board, right? And see, I don't like, the scouting series was so much fun because you're in, I was like in the weeds and in the building of all the different stuff that was going on in the draft. And I just watched from afar as everyone made big boards. So like, this is my chance to make up for the content that I did not produce during draft season. And this is like, right. up my alley, so I'm stoked about this.

I'd like to apologize before we even get started about the names that are going to come off the board here and the order they're going to come off. We are going to have an honorable mention section at the end because there are plenty of guys that are worth talking about that you can't squeeze into a top 10 list. So before everyone gets very angry, we're going to try to do our best to give everybody their proper due as part of this exercise. But let's get to it. I did give you the first overall pick.

You can kick us off here. Who are you choosing as your top pick in the top? top 10 coaches draft here. Surprising absolutely no one. I'm selecting with the number one overall pick at Los Angeles Rams head coach, Sean McVeigh. I know, like pick yourself up out the floor, Robert, because I know you're just, you're stunned right now. But what I think is so interesting about this is that you have such proximity to it,

that you understand both the good and the bad. And that's why I think that your kind of well-rounded understanding of who he is, how he operates and what he is as a head coach, the fact that you, you're still so enthusiastic about putting him at the top here. I think that says a lot. So what ultimately gets him there for you? Yeah, for me, the fact that he's so dynamic still seven years in, the culture setting aspect, even in 2022 when he and the Los Angeles Rams both essentially fell off a cliff.

And it really exposed a lot of things about how the ship is completely built around Sean McVeigh, every piece of that organization exists to achieve his highest functionality, which is at its best or even at like 70 percent, is kind of a remarkable thing to see in the way that it lifts everything and everyone. I joke with him, a lot of coaches joke with him, he could call a defense right now. If you were going to line him up on the opposite sideline for an NFL defense, he could call that defense.

Obviously, he is the offensive mind that we all know, But what I think is really interesting and doesn't actually get talked about enough because, yes, there is there is bad with that. If you build your entire organization around the functionality of the head coach, understanding the ceiling is pretty much limitless. It's Super Bowl appearances. It's always a team that's pretty much always in contention depending on the health of the roster. It's a team that does not give two figs about dead money because other weight-bearing walls will solve the problem, including Sean. It is a person who understands quarterbacks, a person who pushes quarterback sometimes to their limits and other times to new areas that they wanted to explore. That all of those things can be double edged, right? And we both know this.

However, what I don't think is talked about enough about Sean is the constant turnover of his staff and the success that is still maintained despite the constant turnover of his staff. I've written this out a million times, but just to rattle it off, and I'm not trying to patronize a listener. I know they know this. But Sean's been coaching since 2017. He's had offensive coordinators and quarterbacks coaches who have a pretty high profile position within his staff depart. Matt LaFleor, Zach Taylor, Kevin O'Connell, Liam Cohen, though that was ultimately lateral, Zach Robinson. Not to mention the defensive coaches. In 18 and 19, Sean did not actually have an offensive coordinator.

I think people forget that. Those were the only years he didn't lose. an offensive coordinator or quarterbacks coach. So he's lost like five in five years, essentially, to high-ranking jobs. And so what I don't think people on the outside looking and often understand is like when you lose that person, you lose a piece of your language. You lose a person who is also shouldering an enormous amount of the workload that that head coach depends on. And you lose ideas. Those ideas get sort of enveloped and unfolded in other areas and other parts of other teams, and you lose them from your building, and you lose the continuation

and the evolution of those ideas within your own space. So what I am most impressed with is Sean over the years is his ability to almost compartmentalize that, to understand I'm going to do this every year to change and adjust the onboarding process. What people don't realize is the Rams, yes, there's a whole thing. They don't go to the Combine, read Finding Rams. But like, they don't, they don't go to the Combine or, like, the Senior Bowl as a staff because he's incubating coaches. That's when they do, he's hiring new coaches and that's when they're running all of their schematic incubators during, is during that time instead of going to these All-Star events that the front office is, you know, the front office has personnel attending. So the time management

around the course of a calendar year that has altered in order to continue to push forward and continue to innovate, I gripe as much as the next person about some of the late down decision making, some of the play sequencing when he, you know, calls the draw on third and long because he's tossing out an entire section of the playbook, you know, when, you know, those, those types of things, I gripe as much as the next person. But if that's the gripe, come on, did I sell it? Did I sell Sean McVeigh on the listener? There are a couple more, I think, selling points that I want to dig into. The negatives are worth pointing out. I remember we were at the Rams Lions playoff game this in January. And they punted literally and figuratively on a drive

at the end of the half. I just decided like, we're okay. We're going to go to the half. And I remember walking over to you and just being like, why is he like this? It frustrates me so much when he does these things where some of these decision making, these situational decision making issues, they continue. He's been one of the worst coaches in the NFL with timeout usage and application over the last three or four years. He burns them like they're free. And they're absolutely not. They're very useful.

And the fourth out decision making can be frustrating at times. But his ability to transcend all of that with everything else that he does, I think ultimately Trump said, I probably would have taken him. number two. And I think that there's a pretty obvious choice who's probably going after him, a guy who's won a lot of Super Bowl so we can talk about in a second. But beyond the coaching staff turner, which I think is absolutely worth pointing out. And the same thing is true on defense. He's had to replace multiple defensive coordinators and continue to do a very good job with that. The inability to build on the previous year idea-wise, or which should be an inability to build

on it as you cycle through offensive coordinators, the fact that they've been able to evolve to the degree that they... And be in front. I mean, we, we... We talk about this all the time, not just to get where the league is, but to be ahead this last year, the things that they were doing on offense, even before anyone was watching them, because everyone was still making fun of the roster, which granted had 40, 41 players on it at one point and 44 rookies at another point. But like, so fair, but also, like, people weren't watching this team when they came out of the gate and kicked the door down last year, playing all of

these young players and running, you know, duo against Seattle and sifting their tight ends and doing all of these things that, like, he's never done, but happened to catch to be in front again. And then what do you see? A couple weeks later, everybody starts doing the same thing. One of my favorite things about talking to Sean over the years, especially over the last few years, is every single conversation with him is a glimpse into the future. Because the way that he's thinking about the game is what is coming next. And I remember talking to him about Stafford and when they traded for Stafford and what the ideas were behind the move. And there was this priority on all-purpose plays.

So we've reached a world where you can't just call your cover three beaters and your single high beaters because that's just not how defenses are anymore. They're not giving you the answers to the test before the test begins. And having a quarterback who can access everything in a more unpredictable way was a huge starting point to how they were going to evolve on offense. And then you watch what that offense was with Matthew Stafford. That's exactly what happened. And then some of the things that have come on defense, I think he's been able to predict

those with kind of shocking accuracy. And that's why he's able to stay a half step or one full step ahead of the curve, despite all of this coaching staff turnover. It's a product of how his brain works, but it's a product of just being able to see things and see the chessboard in a way very few people can. And I think that's what's allowed them to stay in success in the way that they have. Yeah. Sorry, I almost cut you off there.

I got excited. You know, this is fun already. And I know who you're going to pick, and I'm so excited because I was thinking about picking that person. right but like and I'll get to that in a minute but I I think with Sean what pushed me over like I've known I've watched him coach for you know five years and like right there every day in the building and I know what he's about on the good days I know what he's about on the bad days in terms of how he runs that building and how that building operates around him I think for me the biggest

the biggest thing that sealed it that kind of pushed it over of like okay you you now are fully back in your groove, first of all. But second of all, like, you have entered a new phase of your coaching adulthood, essentially, of you're really getting into the good stuff now. You were in the great stuff before and like the flash and like being out in front and the frenetic pace of having to consistently cycle over and doing so much of that in a vacuum because you are losing voices, trusted voices in your building to bounce ideas off of each other and to try those things. But last year, watching him coach those kids, I mean, watching the way, the intentionality behind the way that they would even build drives into practice,

teaching, using OTAs to reteach drills to 44 rookies for the first time, I walked out, I'd never seen anything like it in my entire life, how far back they had to start. And it's not a knock on the players, they draft smart players. We know this. It's a matter of necessity. That's the reality of the situation. They had to. They had to show them how to practice. But to see the intentionality and the building blocks being placed in tiny increments that you would lose your mind if you're Sean and you're impatient and you're trying to move forward faster, but knowing you could not rush that process, for him to practice that kind of discipline and, and, um, in, um, in, you're intentionality with the way that he coached last year. First of all, you saw the product on the field

kind of blow people away in terms of how far along they got relative to what that roster was and truly was, not just look like on paper. And to see the amount of thought and micro detail that went into that, but also on a human level, coming back and reaching players in a way he hadn't in 2022, coming back to himself in a way he hadn't in 2022. It just, for me, it was like watching somebody grow up, like right in front of you, which I don't become reborn in a certain way. I don't mean to sound patronizing at all with that either. It's just, I think that's really important. I think the really great, the legendary coaches rebirth themselves or are reborn many, many, many, many times over the course of their career. And it's how you do it, how you walk into the next doorway.

To me, that is what set Sean apart. And I'm really excited to see what he does over these next several years because he's a, he is himself, but he is also altered. And I think that that is why I picked him number one, because the capacity to change, not just your ideas and your scheme, but yourself to push yourself into a new place that you need to be as a human, as a coach, as an adult. I just, I think that was really, really important for him. And to watch was was really cool. And that's what pushed him over the top is number one for me. It's beautifully said. I think all of that is exactly right. And even as somebody who was watching sort of on the outside and had more peripheral conversations with him about that stuff, it was very impressive to watch. And I think the level of self-awareness that he exhibited on multiple different levels was staggering. And I think something that really does tap into what makes him special. And I remember talking to you last summer after I was there for a couple of days. And we were doing our kind of Rams preview on the show here. And it was kind of like, I don't know, man, I think they could be pretty good. I think that they could be so much better than people from the outside believe because of the end. energy that he's been able to tap into and what those practices felt like. So I'm 100% with you.

He probably would have been number two for me, but I'm going with Andy Reid as my number two pick here. And I probably would have picked Andy Reid number one. And, you know, it's difficult because it's so hard to extricate who Andy Reid is from who the quarterback is. And when you have the best quarterback in the world and a guy who is on pace to be the greatest quarterback of all time has had the best six year run of any quarterback of all time, probably, you know, when you include individual accolades and team accomplishments, it's hard to pull those things apart. But you mentioned practice. And practice is actually where I'm going to start with Andy Reid. What is to me remarkable about Andy Reid is that Andy Reid is, I don't know how old, 60 something. You know, it is early to mid-60s. And his ability to straddle this line between a coach who has tapped into what I would think,

is kind of the epitome of this, this emotional intelligence-centric model of modern NFL head coaches, where these guys are, there's more communication with players. There's more effort to kind of get on the same level as your players and understand them and open those doors. Andy Reid in his 60s does that as well as anybody does. The amount of trust and confidence he can instill in guys because the environment he creates is similar to a lot of these 35, 36, 37 year old guys who should understand these 20-something kids better than anybody else. But he's able to do that while also establishing a standard and a physical. and a way that you're supposed to play that these young guys don't do.

And I think that's remarkable. You know, the way that the Rams go through camp and the way the teams like the Bengals and some of these teams that are a little bit new agey, they take a step back. You know, it's not foot on the gas all the time. You hear about Andy Reid training camp practices. It's awful.

I mean, it's absolutely awful, but guys are willing to do it because there's a love on the other side of it. And I think that balance is something that makes Andy so special. And then you combine that with the constant ability to innovate at this stage of his life. The fact that he's as deep into, I was going to say old, but the fact that he's as deep into this as he is and he's tenured.

He's tenured. He's wise. He's constantly able to tap into, well, what if we tweak this and what if we tweak that? And it's always changing every single year. That's remarkable to me. And so I just think all of that stuff combined and we can talk about some of the other kind of details and other layers to it. But that's at the center of why I think he's special, even if it's hard to parse where his accomplishments start and where passion becomes accomplishments at.

Yeah, I think, well said, and I agree with you, he was, I thought about this for a long time. And then I thought, I have to set some parameters. I have to set parameters around this entire thing about, like, how I'm going to think about this. Because it's so, you want Andy Reid as your head coach. I mean, I don't care who you are, what organ, like you covet a head coach like that. And for me, I thought I had to look at it as if I were a team owner or a team president who was basically given a roster and like a control group like we talked about and then told and then told to say, okay, we want to get this higher right. And this is going to be, you know, a decade, 15 years, maybe 20 higher. And so for me, the reason why I picked Sean was, I mean, frankly, because he's just, you know, younger. guy thinking about those parameters. And I mean no offense by that at all because Andy Reid is a

stunningly remarkable mind. And what I really like about him is he's consistent. Like when people think about innovation, they think it happens in like these flashes and like starbursts, right? And like these little atoms that collide and everything. But it just, he has this stability. Like he just does the thing over and over and over and over and over. There's a disappointment to it. Yeah, and the fact that he is disciplined in this way, I think that is not only really important for his players to have the same person every day when they come to work, but also who is going to give them something. He's going to give them an answer to the test every single day when they come to work. So you really can take, your players talk about this all the time, you could take whatever the physical, brutal, you know, drives are or whatever. Like, you can take the rough practices because you know you're getting answers to the test.

And that's something that I think he's done at such a high level. I don't necessarily think it matters to separate the coach from the quarterback in this case. I know that's like maybe hot takey, whatever. But like, because I think they found each other because they're, flashier coaches have done less with that quarterback, by the way. And like Andy Reid just shows up. He just shows up in a way that totally complements and also enhances so many of the players on his roster. And the other thing that I love, and this came up a few times over the course of my top 10 here, he doesn't seem to have an ego when he hires. He doesn't seem to have any.

Like, he lets his dec coordinator cook. Like, you would be surprised. You would not be surprised. But some people would be surprised by how that can come up as an issue between the head coach and then the D.C. Or an offensive play caller and a defense. Like, he gets out of the way. He lets his D.C. cook. And he understands that you're not always.

going to necessarily be the offense that's just dominating everybody. And you have to play to your strengths, not just, you know, in each phase, but also to a man on the roster. And I think he does that really well. I think complimentary football is where I would go with that. And his ability to create a set of circumstances on offense and defense that have felt complimentary. You've seen that throughout his tenure with Patrick specifically.

And those teams in 18, 19, defense was terrible. They couldn't stop anybody. And they played that way. was all about can we create one or two turnovers in this game and get the ball back like a pressing basketball team to complement this high-flying offense that we have. And now you see what the offense feels like, especially this year, combined with an elite defense and things have shifted. And I think they understood that within the building. It's like, we can pun it every so often right now. As as long as we run the ball well, we'll get to a final result that we feel comfortable with. And I think

being able to kind of ride those waves year after year, that's what great coaches do. And that's what he's been able to do. And the coaching staff thing, and we mentioned that with Sean as a strength, and his ability to find a guy like Steve Spagnolo and tap into that has changed everything for that organization over the last three or four years. And then on offense, they've cycled through offensive coordinators. And it hasn't really mattered because I think the brilliance of what Andy did in Act too is he said, I don't really want to be the GM.

I don't really want to do this personnel stuff. I'm going to be the guy in install meetings. I'm going to be the guy at the center of everything offensively. And then if you remove component pieces, it doesn't matter because I am at the center of all of this. And I think that commitment to that sort of model within the building has ultimately allowed them to sustain success on that side of the ball in the way that they have combined with having the greatest quarterback that I've ever seen.

But if you go back to the 2017 chiefs, that offense ruled. that offense was incredible and there was nothing Patrick Mahomesy about it until that final game of the year. So I know it's a while ago now, but I think it's important to remember what sort of offensive coach he was before that guy that wears number 15 got to town.

Yeah, I love that point because like I said, I mean, it really does help significantly for a coach to have, you know, one of the greatest of all time top two, you know, like the greatest currently playing, like just incredible superstar quarterback. at the helm. It helps. The thing, though, that can be tough, again, it goes back to being

egoless. The thing that can be tough, if you are that brilliant play caller and offensive mind, is letting go and letting that person fail, letting that person, it's hard to remember multiple Patrick Mahomes failures, but, you know, to, like, letting that person learn and grow and continuing to support the entire ecosystem in terms of the scheme and the philosophy around that player as he grows up. And I think the other thing that I like about Andy Reid, and like I said, this top five, at least the top seven, was really tough. Like, I mean, it was fun as hell, but it was tough.

Like, oh, no, life is hard, right? Yeah, darn. We're going to get some tough decisions here in a minute, so you're allowed to say that. I do like, and I wrote this down, I wanted to make sure to say it, because it does go hand in hand to me why I think Sean is a great coach and will become an even greater coach as time passes. I wrote, I like that Andy Reid has already been through the shit and thrived on the other side in terms of his career. Andy Reid calls plays like a man who has gotten through his worst days and understands that failing on a down is hardly the end.

And he just tries stuff. And again, I think it's the egoless, bright, sustainable, steady innovation that he carries with him. And I think the other point about Mahomes, the last thing I'll say, not everyone would have let Patrick Mahomes be that version of Patrick Mahomes. And I think his ability to kind of live outside of that rigidity. Andy Reid's ability to do that was key in allowing Mahomes to kind of become the player that he ultimately did. And I don't think anyone or everyone would have allowed that sort of flexibility and wouldn't have been able to let go to that degree. But he was. And I think it's made a huge difference in shaping what that team is. Before we hit the break, I want to tell you to check out some of the other great content on the Athletic Podcast Network this week. The NBA finals are in full swing. The Athletic

NBA show is breaking it all down with some of the best voices in the business. Make sure to give them a listen. Now I think is where things get interesting. You have the third pick here. Who are you going with with your third pick? This surprised me in some ways. It did not surprise me in other ways. I know I've also set you up for draft success with the pick that I'm about to make because I think I know who you have at as you're, anyway, I won't belabor the point.

I actually, this is controversial a little bit. I'm selling it. I actually picked Matt LaFleur. Wow. Yeah. So I know. I will say this. I will say this. He was fourth on my big board. Okay. So it's not that far off. He was fourth for me. This is when it gets really tough because I had two others who I had right up there with him.

But I looked at the body of work, what we thought he was, what we assigned to him based on his circumstances of the personnel that he inherited versus what he showed last year in developing the, you know, the youngest roster and the least. I thought that his ability as a developer of talent, not just as a compromiser to greatness, and showed through in every way imaginable last year. I sat down with Matt last spring, and OTAs were ongoing. And I was sitting in his office and he had all of these screens pulled up with all of these film cutups of a few different teams that he was trying. to borrow ideas from that he was just unabashedly saying, I like that, I think that could fit our running back. I like that. I think that could fit one of our tight ends. Maybe we'll talk about this for the other one. And just trying to figure out what would be best for his players, especially understanding he definitely knew what the stakes were for him last year. There was this entire need, I think more

from the outside, but probably for a little bit from the inside as well, for him to show what he was capable of as an actual coach. And again, not not somebody who is going to support, you know, one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, who also, by the way, could, could stand there and call a game if he had to. And perhaps has. We don't know. He will this year. I promise you that. Yeah. But I think, but I think like what was so interesting to me was at one point he turned to me and he looked at me and he was like, I have no idea what we're going to be next year. Like, I have no idea. But we're going to find it along the way. And right now, all I can do is be as prepared as possible with a wide

range of concepts, ideas, schemes, and teaching tools to try to get the best out of these players, something that makes them feel good, something that makes them feel confident, something that helps bring them along to speed. And as the season progressed, you saw that happen. When I went to Green Bay, I spent the week beforehand talking with Matt Schneidman, our colleague at The Athletic, and he covers the Packers, does a great job. And Matt said something really interesting to me that had kind of, like, cracked out in the mutterings of what was going on on the beat that week. And he said that that week, Matt LaFleur had kind of changed practice around a little bit. You know, obviously the Packers were struggling.

And it just seemed like doom and gloom ahead. And maybe they were about to hit a wall and then, like, kind of fall back the other side. And he changed practice a little bit to where they had a little bit more competitive periods. With a young roster, you can do that even into the season because you have energy and you're not necessarily every, not everyone's on a pitch count, that kind of thing. Yeah, and terrorism is being of an issue. Yeah. And you just, I mean, you have energy, your kids, you know. And so, and he changed it to be a little bit more competitive, but also he changed it to be a little bit faster-paced, freer, feeling like, don't think just go for everybody. And I think that moment to me sticks out to my mind of when they started to reveal. themselves to him as a group. And he opened the space to allow that to happen instead of staying

in his ways with all of the pressure and your season might be failing and the walls are closing in kind of a thing. But instead, he and the team sort of revealed themselves to each other in that way and opened that space to create something that became a much more evolved version of what I think any of us really expected from that offense through the course of the year looking at that roster. The work with the quarterback also, because I think Jordan Love is outstanding. And the work with Jordan Love, it can be so, like, tenuous, like, it can be so fraught with the quarterback. The line of success or failure, it is so narrow. And, like, I'm rewatching Lord of the Rings right now. And they're talking about, like, you know, Glade Drills talking about, like, one false step

and the entire thing could tumble. Like, that is being a young quarterback. So that's, that's, That's a tortured metaphor. But that's being a young quarterback. Like, you know, saving the free world, you know, it's fine. But you can absolutely implode if you have one bad week, if you have a repeated mistake, if you aren't given the confidence, if you don't have the space to learn. And I think even tougher. And he had a couple bad weeks.

I remember that Raiders game pretty damn well. Yeah. And it's a credit to Jordan, too, because he stayed the course and he is made of the right stuff. And like he really was, he handled that really, really well, especially for being so young. But he also didn't have like a veteran receiver in the room. I remember talking with Matt. It was like normally the receiver, the veteran receiver paired with the young quarterback.

He's telling the quarterback what he likes, what to do. Instead, it's like a bunch of kids kind of all learning together about what is right, what is wrong, what they can do, what they can't do, what they like, what they don't like. And in doing so, becoming empowered to speak to those things. And I think Matt opening the space to allow that to happen really kickstarted a lot of that talent development. And you could see him start to, you know, gain his own momentum as a coach, as a play caller, really, down the stretch. And then you could feel the confidence coming. I would gripe a bit with sticking with some of the hires for a little bit too long. Yes, that's my main concern.

Yeah, I would gripe with that. I think he learned, I think he, you know, not to speak for him, this is my own thought, but just I think he, you learn a lesson. from that. I think if that happens and you go back and you watch what's actually going on and where you're vulnerable and how things are being taught, then you realize you learn a pretty big significant lesson from that. But I also think that in some of these buildings where it is very much, you know, especially the tree, right? It's very much the coach who has such a significant say and personnel decisions. This is a little bit of a different building. It's more of a, you know, like a collateral share. It's traditional. It's, and so,

you have to, you really do work with who they give you. Yes, you have a say, but you really do work with the players who are selected for you as the coach. And that's what I think coaching is. And I think that's sustainable. And I think that is so apparent that like he wasn't just this guy that was winning, you know, a shitload of games and happened to have one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time at the helm. He also can develop players. And so this is a bit of a risky pick for me because it's a bit of projection that he can continue to do this when we saw it for a year. But I was really, really impressed by that year and more so, I was really impressed by that conversation where he basically said, if we fail, it's on me because I haven't prepared

them enough. Instead of a million different things about the youth of that roster or whatever, instead he was doing everything he could to control what he could and then allow freedom and space and like bumps and failure along the way in order to continue to evolve those ideas forward. I would have had him forth. This isn't crazy to me at all. And I think a lot of the stuff that you said absolutely tracks. And something I think is going to come back a couple times

when we're having this conversation. And as I've done this for a longer, you try to figure out what works and what doesn't with coaches. Why do some guys fail and why do some guys succeed? And humility is something that I continuously come back to. And him saying, I don't know what we're going to be this year. And I remember talking to him last summer and sitting in his office and we were talking about the tight end room and how young it was. And it was just kind of like, yeah, we'll see how it goes. And it wasn't a complaint. You know, and there are times where you open a door for a guy to complain about his situation or his roster or you open a door for a guy to tell you what's going to happen and be really self-satisfied with it. It's like, oh, we're going to do this and we're going to do that. And what I've really learned is guys are wrong more often than they're right when they talk like that. And the guys who can kind of embrace the ambigueling. and can kind of embrace this lack of understanding about how it's going to go and live in that,

those are the guys that consistently have success. And he is one of those coaches. And you combine that with an ability to unlock those guys, an ability to live in the patience that are required to unlock those guys, the work that he did with Jordan. And I don't want to be dismissive of what he did with Aaron over those last couple years. That is another exercise in humility, this ability to kind of reach him halfway and to say, all right, let's figure out what you like and how we can kind of blend. the offense I want to run with the offense that you want to run. The guy won two fucking MVP awards with that being

their working relationship. That's remarkable. And then you combine that with what they were this year. Over the last four years, only the chiefs have a better EPA per play than the Green Red Packers. Only the Chiefs. And he has been a huge part of that along with what Aaron was. There's so many other things that we

can talk about, but I just think that combined with what he did this year and this being kind of him stamping his flag and this is who I am. This is who I am. this is who I am in this hierarchy, this is who I am in this league. He did that this season. And that's why I think putting him here, even if some people are going to consider it a little bit crazy, I don't.

Packers fans, I'm ready for you to flood all of the people who are like, what the hell were you thinking in my mentions with, thanks for picking our guy. Drown out the noise, Packers fans. The Joe Barry thing is the only one. That's like, you cut that one year earlier and you give yourself a better chance over the last couple years. That's the one thing where I wish he would have pulled the rip cord slightly quicker than he did, but that's really my only gripe. If you look at, to me, one of the biggest things about him is, he's a departure from the rest of these young

play-calling head coaches who have no idea how to manage a game and who consistently make problem decisions in that area. He's third in the EPA per play that they've generated on four-down decisions over the past three years. If you look at the Ben Baldwin model about when teams should go for it, the Packers were number one in the NFL over the past four years and going for it on Fort Down when they should. Among this group, that is incredible because he is the outlier among these guys. So even that little net pick that you can have with McVey, you can have with Shanahan, who will get to, he doesn't apply there. So he really checks so many more boxes than I think other people understand about what kind of coach he is.

Yeah. And then to peel back even further, I mean, first of all, the Rogers think cannot go understate. I think we know more now than we previously did about what it did take. taken what it was to actually build out a playbook and a cohesive plan in that time. And the functionality of it was remarkable. And between coach and player, I mean, it just, we, we know what that kind of, we know more about what kind of an effort that would have taken from, from either side. But then also, the fourth down thing, most coaches don't build sections in their playbook with variability fourth down plays at any level. And you have a,

bucket that you pull from, you have a section. But in terms of the evolutionary nature of other down-and-distance plays, like, that is a tough thing to build into your week. Your week of practice, like, there's no time to install some of those things for the way that practices are structured. And, like, I remember hearing stories about, like, oh, you know, ex-coach, who I'll leave private, like, oh, ex-coach, you're installing a fourth-down play that you might run, like, as you walk to the bus to like go to the stadium. Like just think there's no time. And so that's part of the reason why so often I think we see people, because investing into the data, investing into the analytics, but also investing into the tutelage that it takes to balance that known win probability

to balance some of these models, to first of all to invest in the resources to find those trusted models and develop them in-house, but then also to balance that one side of the building with the football side of the building, like to actually mesh the, the, the, and marry the two thoughts together, which actually should be one of the same thought because everyone's trying to win football games and score points, but I digress. Like, it's, it's very hard to do. And I think Matt has done a really good job of that. And it is striking the difference.

It's not the only thing. It's certainly not one of the only 10 things, but it is striking. And it is noticeable because he's clearly built a time in the week where that is something that they are devoted to of those game situationals and scenarios. Absolutely. And a lot of these play calling guys, you only have so much bandwidth. And that's something that often falls by the wayside. And the fact that it hasn't with him, I think that's very impressive.

So I had him at four, and I have no issue with this. That being said, I'm taking Kyle Shanahan. And it was a conversation with me. It was an internal conversation about Kyle or Sean at number two. And here's the reason for that. I think that, while Sean is incredible, Matthew Stafford is amazing. Like Matthew Stafford is playing football at a crazy high level.

He's a rising tide. I mean, it's, and you look at it, and I'm not going to have Sean weighed down by what he did with bread ripping for one game. But having Matthew Stafford is very nice. Kyle Shanahan's ability to create the most devastating offense in professional football over the last two years with Mr. Irrelevant at quarterback, even though he's better than that, even though his particular skill set has elevated them in ways. that other replacement level quarterbacks cannot. He has still built the best offense in the NFL with the guy who was the last pick in the draft. And he did it immediately.

That's insane. And you look at what the staff turnover has looked like in San Francisco. It's similar. He's lost so many guys. And the ability to consistently iterate on the next steps of what that offense has to be while dealing with similar turnover, the Sean's had to deal with in LA, it's remarkable. And it can't be overstated how hard that is to do.

But the last thing I'll come back to with Kyle, it's the way they play. That's what I always come back to. It's not the way the X's and O's are drawn on the chalkboard. It's not the way that the designs are. It's not the intellectualization of the sport. It's the fact that they play so hard. When you watch Brandon Ayuk Block or Joanne Jennings,

just what's instilled about the style of offense we're going to consistently play. and it trickles over to the defense too. That's what I come back to. That's what culture is. When you can have that, and that just goes down to every single guy on the roster, that's what culture is.

And that's how they play. It's not just the designs. It's the style and the mindset that they play with that makes them as good as they are, and you can't just copy that. That's something that a head coach and the guy at the top of this instills, and I think that he has done a remarkable job of that.

Yeah, I was very surprised, at not putting Kyle higher in my... What kept you from doing that? You know, I think some of it is the closing element of things, getting so close and then one or two things. But I also don't think that's fair, right? I don't think, I think that's hypocritical because I'm not assigning that to people who maybe haven't even had an opportunity

to be in those situations just yet. In order to fall short at the end, you have to get to the end. And I think it's, I don't want to be, I don't want to hand wave it, but there is an element of randomness with that stuff that I think people aren't necessarily willing to admit, but it's very real. Like in order to lose a 28 to 3 lead, which was not all his fault, you have to have a 28 to 3 lead in the Super Bowl.

Yeah, I think, and again, I don't think all of the blame that comes his way in those moments. Some of it is merited. Some of it is not. because again, these games are so randomized. Something could, you know, a butterfly flaps its wings and, like, all of a sudden, like, someone drops a pass. Defonte Freeman misses a block and the Falcons lose the Super Bowl. It takes one thing. Yeah.

And so, and I think anyone listening to this knows how much I respect Kyle Shanahan and, like, thank the world of what he's created, too. Because what I'll say is I think it surprised me because I think that for me, the reason why I didn't have him higher was the, double-edged sword of, again, some of the things that I brought up with Sean, where you built the entire plane around this guy and how he functions at his best. And I will say that I refer to Kyle a lot as a long-haul trucker because he's just built, he's built for this. Like, he's built for the pain of it. He's built for the torture of it. He's done it for a long time. He's built. Yeah. But he's built for it. And you, like, he's built for the, um, constant, like, I don't even know, I don't, I, I, I, I legitimately don't know what he would be like if he won one. Because I can, because I can see, only see in my

mind's eye this like endless loop of this guy innovating and building. And it's the, it's Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill. And that's, that's, that's in my mind's eye who he embodies to. me of like in if we're looking at this group collectively as like this is your lot and this is what and you just continue to push the boulder and so i think it's a complicated thing i think when i'm looking at you know the sean macfays the andy reads um and it's not like kyle hasn't recently developed talent i mean it's right there in front of you the talent that he's helped develop and then also the way that he designs his scheme to not just uplift players but also to empower them because they will hurt you. Like, it doesn't matter what you're doing on defense because they're

going to run over you and they're going to hit you in the mouth. And it's like, it's almost like this, I almost, I don't know, I kind of think part of it is I picture him off into this vortex elsewhere. Like, he's not of this group or this list. He's kind of like over there. And he just, because he's done it for so long at this point, but he's done it in this specific way for so long. long at this point, but there's also this, like, deeply futile way to, like, how his arc has happened. And when I did play callers, it was, like, very clear that the comfort level with that level of darkness you have to go to and that you will go to. And that's why I call him a long haul trucker is because he will be doing this. I think he will be doing this longer than even he says

he will be doing it because I think he has gotten very, very, very. comfortable in that place. And whatever the team looks like, you know, after this year or after the next two years, he will know how to build it. And he's done like the long build. And he's also done, okay, team is in contention, start adding pieces and investing there. So the versatility there is also striking. I don't know. I could not put my finger on what stopped me, frankly. And that's not logical or sound. And you guys can let me hear it fine. I, I, I do. not know what stopped me other than feeling a, I think, completeness in the trajectory of a Matt LaFleur from what he had to deal with and what he did last year over year 22, 23.

You can make an argument that the best days for, I don't know if the best days for McVey, but maybe the best days and the best days for LaFleur are still ahead of them. I think you could make an argument for Cal if that's not the case. I think that what he has done over the last couple years is the greatest painting he'll ever paint and we'll see what happens as they kind of have to pick up the pieces that guys get more expensive, et cetera. But I just think that their ability

to constantly be tweaking and constantly be pushing things forward and really being at the cutting edge offensively is just, that's what I would want. I would want that every single year and I think we would get that. I don't want to spend too much time on this,

but I am interested in exploring it a tiny bit more. If you won one, you know them better than I do and you can tell me if I'm wrong with this. I think with Sean, it was he thought that there would be like satisfaction in it that there maybe wasn't, that it would solve things that it maybe didn't.

And with Kyle, I think that it would be temporary relief, but it would be very temporary. I don't think he'd be looking for any sort of like actualization in it if they won one. I think it would be a moment of relief and that it would just be back to the grind again. That's like the slight differentiation in how I would kind of frame the accomplishment for both of them. Yeah, I don't even know if I would say relief with him, frankly. I mean, I think he would be utterly ecstatic, obviously. I also think he knows, he knows things about the depths of what this job is that I think Andy Reid knows those things. But among all of the other people we're talking about here, I think that Andy Reid and Kyle are very similar in that way, where it's like, it's winning a Super Bowl is the ultimate goal.

It's the only, it's the only thing for all of these guys, right? I think that Kyle, and this is my opinion, I think that Kyle, I don't even know that I would use the word relief because I think it would just be another point in a very long timeline of understanding this sport on a level that's not necessarily quantified by wins and losses and championships. And that doesn't mean to say he doesn't want one or he's not going to work, do everything and, you know, push himself to the limits to get. one. It's like multiple things can be true at the same time. I just think that I think he compartmentalizes, kind of like you're alluding to, I do think he compartmentalizes or internalizes the things that happen through the course of a coach's timeline differently. I don't think the worst thing in the world to him is losing the Super Bowl. I think it's being behind. I think that that's a differentiator that I think Sean had to realize, but Kyle's

known it for a long time. All right. Let's get to our next one here. Again, I thought... What are we on? What number are we on? We're on five. So you have the fifth pick here. Those are the four that I had in my top four of my big board. Who are you going with the number five? Because I think this is where things get very interesting. I got Dan Campbell. Okay. I like it. I had him at six. So...

I will tell you, I had someone else... I flip-flopped between him and someone else here probably about 40 times over the course of it to where I literally have them listed, parallel on my note sheet because that's how like agonizing this decision was, but I feel like we're starting to get a little bit unfair as to what he's built over the course of year, a couple of years. And that's the only reason I picked him over this other person that I have next on my list and we're going to share big boards at the end. Fine. But like I, it took years and patience and a patience that you see people flame out of more often than not. And a true collaborative, like a proof year over year over year of proven data of collaboration with the front office, of truly investing in a partnership with the front office. It's similar to why

I put Matt High is like there's proof of that true collaboration. Sometimes it doesn't work the best like that, but if it does in your building, you lean into it. And Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes. That's the secret sauce, man. That's what everybody's after. And they have it. And I think the Packers have something similar. Yeah. And it is. so interesting the way that he is. He reaches players, but he thinks forward. He blends that old school coaching mentality with this real progressiveness and how he thinks about the sport and how the sport changes and evolves and adapts. Somehow he's built the kind of culture that like the hot name in offensive coordinating like doesn't want to leave. And I got to tell you, like I covered the

end of the Jared Goff era in Los Angeles. And I watched very closely the start of the Jared Goff and the continuation of the Jared Goff era in Detroit. And the thing that sets Dan Campbell apart, I think, and the way that he built out that staff to also reach players and instill confidence, even in dark days and hard times, and to keep pushing forward and to, like, fully open himself up and be like this emotional guy that we see at the podium. But he's not showing us that. He's showing his players that. That's what I think people miss. He's, he's not showing us that for our audience viewing. He's showing that out in, in the open for his players. He's being the same out in the open to the world, showing that he's the same guy with his players. And he's showing his players that he's, he's no

bullshit. And so that's, that's the one thing I think people like kind of overlooked. The other thing is, he understands pace. Like, Sean McFey and Jared Gough, the one thing that I, think the right word, the right characterization of this. And there was emotions and whatever, all that stuff. I'm not talking about that. They were at different paces in terms of their growth plan, their development plan. Sean's pace started in an all-out sprint in 2017, and it only got faster. Jared's pace was when he was still a very young quarterback, still developing, had a, you know, a nightmare of a rookie season where he could have just completely, you know, fallen off the quarterback Cliff like we talked about before, but stayed the course and stayed tough and stayed true to

like trying to develop. It's at a different pace. But what Dan Campbell understood, and when it's like human evolution, like, you know, when you're talking about like relationships in general, no two people evolve and grow and change at the same time. And they very much did not evolve and grow and change at the same time. And it became an issue. And so now when you're talking about understanding haste, it doesn't mean that Dan Campbell necessarily, you know, had all the pieces of a roster to, like, immediately make a run. Like, we remember what those first couple years were like. But he didn't, to me, he didn't place the onus or the pressure solely on the quarterback to fix it all, to be the type of, no, you're growing with us. I don't care about your draft status.

I don't care about, you know, what you've accomplished. You've been to a Super Bowl. Like, let's, you know, let's toss all of that out. And instead, we're all going to grow at the same time. We're going to match each other's pace. And then in doing so, we are going to understand each other. And I think that that is some secret sauce as well of what Dan Campbell has, that sort of it factor that separates him in this field from a lot of coaches. And also ranks him very high for me. The tenure of doing so over the last few years versus, you know, one of my very, a guy on my list who I'm very, very high on,

has been doing it for one year, and Dan Campbell has been doing it for multiple years, and that was the differentiator for me. I think that's totally fair. And I think that the, what they've been able to establish, we talk about culture all the time, how you play, how you approach things,

you're just everything about the feeling of watching that team play. Even with those awful rosters, it was there. You saw it from the start, and that's why, when they started adding talent, the projection and the trajectory was very easy to understand

because the baseline level of this is what Detroit Lions football looks like. These are the types of people that we want. This is the way they were going to play. That was in place from day one. And that part of it, I think, is what people are going to attach themselves to.

And you mentioned the emotional parts of it, it's being genuine. People, not everyone's going to get away with that level of outward emotion as an NFL head coach because people are going to think that it's phony. Your players are going to think

that it's phony. They're going to see through it. That's who he is. is. And I think that people attach themselves to him because they understand that it's genuine. So all of these kind of intangible aspects of who the Lions have been. I think that's what a lot of people will say is the selling point about Dan Campbell. What I think is so impressive is the intellectual parts of this. The fact that he is one of the best in-game decision makers in the NFL, they are first in the EPA that they have added on forked down decisions over the last three years.

The Detroit Lions, the biting kneecaps Detroit Lions have been better in those scenarios of adding win probability that any team in the NFL. And if you go beyond that, timeout usage, the way they understand the clock, the choices they make based on, oh, you know, we're going to the two-minute warning anyway, so why don't we just run the ball here because it doesn't really matter because the clock is going to stop or let's let it run down a little bit more here. Stuff that's hard to quantify, but you watch in real time. I think they're the best in the NFL at that.

And that's him. if you are going to be a CEO type of head coach, you need to do two things. You need to set the feeling in the direction of the building, and you need to be an incredible in-game decision maker that adds value to your football team when you're not calling play as another side of the ball. Guess what Dan Campbell does? Both of those things. And he does them at, I think, arguably the highest level of any coach in the NFL.

So I'm not going to have any sort of pushback here. He was right there and very close on my list. two things I will say. One, I guess it's really just one thing. We have not seen him with a different offensive coordinator. If you remove Ben Johnson from this equation and you have to replace him, what does this look like? When we get a guy who's maybe 75% as special as Ben Johnson, what did the Detroit Lions look like? And there's a chance that they'll be able to replace him and they will be just fine.

But unlike a lot of the other guys on this list, we have not seen this staff poached and we have not seen them had to reset in the same way that a lot of other successful teams in the NFL have. That's partially because there's a gravity to what he's built and guys will want to stay, but I do think that it is worth mentioning that it's still a question mark for them in a way that it isn't for some of these other teams, some of these other coaches. Yeah, that'll be his big, like LeFleur Rogers moment to me. And again, another reason why I have Matt Hire in this case. I think that it's, it is going to be a test of.

of his ability to not just hire the right staff the first time, but to continue doing that because it's not as if people aren't trying to poach his people. So we know at a certain point it's going to happen. I mean, that was very public and very loud. The attempted poaching is very loud. Stop screaming. But yeah, it was, I think that's going to be, like you said, that's going to be the next test. But I do think that's going to be sort of all of these guys that we're talking about in this

top 10, they have these moments where they can either stay where they're at or they can continue to push. If I were to guess, based on his history about anything about Dan Campbell, I would guess that he will continue to push. So it is really interesting. It's going to be interesting. That will be, like I said before, that will be his moment similar to what Matt had with the departure of Aaron Rogers, with Sean and, ironically, this trade for Stafford. And then into 2022, with Kyle and Brock Purdy and then Kyle and coming off, I think is coming on onto one as well, this last loss.

And the one that Andy Reid has thrived after a million times so far in his career. All right. I got the next one here. This is the sixth pick. I'm going with John Harbaugh. Ah, yes. I've always been so impressed about his ability to reinvent the franchise. And if you go back, I mean, he's been there for a long time. It's been there for a

really, really long time. And there have been so many different versions of the Ravens, the Joe Flacco Ravens going right to the Lamar Jackson Ravens and the understanding of who needed to be in place in 2019 to get the most out of Lamar Jackson. Building it around Lamar Jackson and how unique of a player Lamar Jackson is and understanding that they couldn't just do the same old things if they were going to get the most out of him. And that takes a lot as a coach. That takes foresight. That takes humility.

It takes an understanding. It takes an ability to kind of see into the future. And he's been able to do that. And then you go back over the last two years and they've done it again. This, all right, what, what wink did and what he was, that worked for us. It was hard to deal with. We were a different sort of beast on defense. But the way the league is going, we can't keep doing it this way.

We need to kind of modernize this a little bit and make it a little bit harder to play against. So they hire Mike McDonald. creates the best defense in the NFL and then he gets hired away. Going out and getting Todd Munk in last offseason and saying, you know what? This Roman thing is running its course. It was what it was and we got a ton of success out of it. But if we're going to take this thing to the next level after paying Lamar, we need to take

the offense in a slightly different direction. The ability to see those things pretty much at every single turn since he took that job and sustained success in the way they have because he's been willing to be flexible in those specific areas as that CEO type of head coach, that's what does it for me. think that he's been really effective at those sorts of decisions over a really long period of time. CEO head coach, who like you mentioned with Dan Campbell is really, really good at a few things that do give his team advantages and edges perennially, annually, special teams expertise.

I was covering the game that the Ravens beat the Rams on the punt return touchdown, ultimately. And then management, things like that. 133 EPA of special teams value over the last four years. That is number one in the NFL. There's only five teams above 50. So think about that. That's 80 points over five years. That's an insane advantage.

Justin Tucker's a huge part of that. But this is who the Ravens have been. It's quiet advantages all over the place. Yeah. The front office has done this too. And that's where they are so in lockstep with each other is every front office talks about the Ravens front office and how they find small edges, quiet edges, overlooked edges. Everybody talks about John Harbaugh and how he and his coaching staff always find

quiet edges, overlooked edges, little things that stack up and over time, again, the flapping of a butterfly wing become like these incredibly significant swings over time because of the stacking and the patience that it takes to find tiny little leverage points and advantages. And obviously, Lamar Jackson himself being a massive advantage point and a massive advantage point and a massive edge, but continuing to tweak the scheme, continuing to mess around with the different types of personnel that's around him, continuing to, you know, fiddle a little here and a little there, and like, yes, you know, coordinator changes can seem very significant. And when they take those big swings, there's always a purpose and intent behind it, a meaning it's, okay, we've exhausted our

edges here. Now let's go find a massive edge here and then continue to fiddle and adjust and tweak. I think that the way he empowers players to be themselves, he is kind of the elder statesman, one of them of the league. I'm not calling him old by any means. In fact, he looks like Brock Purdy's older brother, but like... He's a youthful 60-something at this point. It's weird. You know, I texted my group chat back when Brock first kind of emerged in the league.

And I was like, does anyone think that John Harbaugh is actually Benjamin buttoning Brock Purdy? Nobody responded. It's fine. No judgment. He's best to ignore me sometimes. I think that he does continue to push and reinvent himself, but not in a way that's always so obvious or overstated. It can be sometimes finding those small things, taking a chance on a coordinator who maybe was lesser known in the NFL ranks, but who had this juice and this sauce that could really make a difference. He could really understand the argument for why that person was registered.

Mike McDonald was ready to meet the league where it currently was at. He's got this really remarkable ability to look at the landscape of the league around him and continue to, I think, not be too far out in front where he's the biggest target. But he's like the, you know, when you're watching, my metaphors have been awful, I'm sorry, but you know when you're watching like Olympic speedwalking? Sure, yeah, of course. I spent a lot of time doing that every four years. as one does. But like, when you see, and it's just like this, it's, it's the peloton of the Speedwalkers, right? And someone's way out in front. And then you just see, just like this, the hips are swinging, right? And then like, all of a sudden you're like, oh, my God, they're going to take, you know, that's, that's John Harbaugh. He's like, he's, he's kind of in the pack at the front of the pack. And he looks around and he assesses where he's at. And he knows, he understands the striking points and the striking times. And he keeps his edges and advantages.

studies the pack around him, and he finds those lanes and those leverages where, and I say speedwalking, because it happens over a period of time, he doesn't often always swing all at once. It's the steps. He takes all the steps and he doesn't skip them. It's like watching them swallow the dolphins this year. I think that's an example of it, where you have this like, this shooting star that was the Miami Dolphins offensive for the last couple years, and then you get to the end of the year and the ravenants just dismantled them. It's like, oh yeah, I got, I forgot that those guys are always kind of they're lurking. Like this team is always there.

They reflect him in that they, I love this pick, by the way. This was a cluster that was very hard for me. They are so methodical in the way that they destroy you. And it can happen all at once over a very long period of time. And they may not always be necessarily like, you know, they've had dips, but you know they're never going to last. And they've had lulls. And some of it's due to end.

and stuff like that with the quarterback and availability with the quarterback. But, like, you know that every single year of this modern era of the Harbaat-led Ravens, they are always going to be a challenge. And if you look away from them for too long, they will catch the rest of the league totally by surprise because there they were sort of methodically stacking pieces together the entire time. You almost can't take a breath or a pause against them at all. You can't attack them the way that you want to. you almost have to play by their rules every time you play them, which is, that's a hallmark of

good coaching and a good team. He has a 61.8% winning percentage, which is 20th all time, tied for 20th all time, and is very, very high among active head coaches. Only Andy Reid, Mike Tomlin, Mike McCarthy have a higher winning percentage among active head coaches than John Harbaugh. So it's been pretty consistent for a very long period of time with very different-looking teams, very different-looking quarterbacks, and I find that very impressive. All right, number seven, you're up.

Who you got? D'Amico Ryan's. That is aggressive. It is aggressive. I initially had him in my top ten, and he fell out because it was like, it's only been a year. I have some of these questions. I'm curious to get into this, but that is very ambitious.

Why seven for D'Amico Ryans? Yeah, well, first of all, I think he deserves is maybe the wrong word, because everybody deserves the things that they work hard for. But I think it's a good spot for him. Among this cluster of coaches who reach their locker room, they think about football, both in the way that applies directly to the human beings in their locker room and developing them as people,

but also forward-thinking progressive scheme. Defensive guy, his scheme is very progressive. His scheme is incredibly difficult to counter. It is people. have tried to replicate it and have not been successful. I think that's also really important. And he knows how to hire. He knows the type of people not just the people who are going to be calling his offense. And I thought about maybe dropping him a little bit because as a defensive coach, you're going to lose, you're probably going to lose your offensive coordinator at some point if you are

successful. Yeah, right. If you are successful, you are going to lose that person. But when I look at hiring, I'm looking at the layers of hiring that he has installed in place because right behind Bobby Sloick is Jared Johnson, who used to coach C.J. Stroud at Nike Elite 11 camps back when C.J. Stroud was coming up through high school. And trusting that connection, trusting that intel, trusting that development from the ground up and then creating layers of empowerment on your staff as a defensive coach, not micromanaging, where you're taking. making a look at the defense, but you're also in that CEO mentality where you're looking holistically at putting the right people in place for your offensive staff to not only continue this quarterback's development, but also to continue to put pieces of an offense together that was freaking fun. I mean, that offense was fun. The defense was fun.

But you're looking at some of the people he developed on defense as well, the young players, the players who bought in. One thing, I was talking to a Texans coach the other day. And the one thing that he talked about was that D'Amico Foster. a culture where nobody is afraid to bring up ideas. It doesn't matter what side of the ball in a big room together. And nobody's afraid to disagree and turn that type of functional conflict into problem solving. That is not easy to do. It's not easy to do ever. To do it in your first year, as a coach with a specialty on one side of the ball, to me that lasts. That sustains.

the reason why he was tough for me with a Dan Campbell is Dan Campbell's been doing it longer. But the things we're talking about here are very similar. He just happens to be young. He's done it for one year. I think that it's a major testament as well to what can happen when a dynamic, smart, progressive-minded, culture-forward and culture-oriented, developing young coach can pair with the right quarterback and they can continue to grow together. Like similar to, I mean, to take it to the other side of the lifetime line here, when we're talking about Andy Reid pairing with Patrick Mahomes, that happened at the right time for Andy Reid because he was like becoming new again.

Like he was sort of becoming rebut he had that amazing year and then he pairs with the right guy at the right time. And you could see them even as great as Andy Reid has been at designing an offensive calling plays for long, long time. you could see them grow together. I think the pairing that correct coach with the correct quarterback, to me, all of those reasons, including the ones I mentioned before, are why this actually does sustain for it in terms of the caliber of coach that D'Amico is. And like I said, his staff cannot speak more highly of him, which, again, you know,

everybody wants a spot in some of these new jobs. Everybody wants to be at the front. everybody's agents are feeding, you know, the everyone, all of the names and all of this stuff. Everybody's doing that. But the common theme that keeps emerging is that everybody loves working for him and everybody loves Domingo. Yeah. Everything you said is what I've heard in talking to people who work for him.

And the Gerard Johnson point is one I was going to make as well because that's the question. It's all right. If you're going to be a defensive minded head coach and your guy's going to get post, what's your plan? Do you have a succession plan in place? Have you built the sort of staff and the sort of ecosystem offensively that can sustain that sort of loss? And Gerard Johnson is somebody that I would bet on. You know, in hearing about his interviews for offensive coordinator jobs this year and talking to him, I think that he is one of those guys, that was the right sort of second layer of a staff hire that makes you feel comfortable and enthusiastic about where this can ultimately go. All that being said, we haven't seen it yet.

We haven't seen it yet. And that's what holds me back. That's a big thing. But you, I think that, you getting in front of it, I respect that because I think that they're in a year, in two years and three years, we could look at him as the seventh pick in something like this and think about how silly it was that he lasted that long. But I just think we've seen guys do it for a year or two and then fall off. And that's why it's just hard for me to throw him in here with guys who've had a little bit more sustained success. But I'm with you on pretty much everything that you said. The other side of it, the one other thing I'll mention, the in-game decision making has not been great.

And that is something when you're an early head coach, that can happen. But as a defensive-minded head coach, that worries me because sometimes that can creep in with these guys. There's a conservative approach to this that is ultimately going to hamstring you when you're having to game plan and go against these guys are truly exceptional in game decision makers. So that's the one other thing that knocked him a little bit further down my list, but it's mostly just a time-on-task skins-on-the-wall sort of conversation. Yeah. And I think for me on all of these guys, it's been, a cool, a positive or negative, like, slight variable and not necessarily a deeply significant one in terms of the more granular side of the decision-making in game.

I think that does continue to develop depending on what you're investing in and you're building and in yourself as a coach. We've seen coaches develop. We've seen coaches stay rigid and stuck in their ways, but we have seen coaches develop and kind of get, you know, on the train in terms of that. I think with D'Amico, one of the things, so I did keep him, I think he's brilliant, but I did push him down, you know, in the conversation alongside with Dan Campbell, because of the tenure thing. But then, then the other thing that does sort of give him a boost, in my opinion, is the fact that he spent time working for Kyle Shanahan. And I think that you see, like I said, you see the darkness at that point. But you also, there is a, you are in. You are in. You are in. You are. You. in a building that has the type of continuity that allows you to take risks, that allows you to try things, that allows you to push and evolve forward. And you learn a lot of lessons working

for Kyle Shanahan that you, it's very hard to get in other places. And so I think in terms of can he sustain, I think he can. In two years, I could be completely wrong. But my gut and my instinct and then the body of work that he's built so far, plus his, his background and his history and his sort of understanding of the league on the deepest level and understanding the way that coaches tick on the deepest level for better and for worse. To me, that makes him certainly top 10, and I have him at 7. Yeah, I don't blame me at all. I think that those instincts are leading you in the right direction here. I'm just a coward and need a little bit more time. All right. This is tough. This next cluster was hard for me. I really struggled.

My top six and the guys that came off in pretty much that order, I felt confident about at eight here for me, I'm going with Sean McDermott. And the reason that I'm going with- That's aggressive. What do you mean I'm aggressive? The reason that I'm going, I think that he has be,

what they have built over the last five, six years, I think has become underrated in a way. And I think that we think about the changes that they've had at their offensive coordinator spots and some of those moving pieces and maybe that's a knock against him. But I think that their ability to find the right guy to run the offense and have consistent success on offense is really impressive. As a defensive minded head coach, that doesn't always happen. He found Brian Daibow after one year of Rick Donison, and it made a huge difference in Josh Allen's development. Ken Dorsey, even though he had to

fall on the sword this year, he did a good job. That offense was very good. And then going to Joe Brady, I think that they now have a third guy that you can feel very good about. With defensive-minded head coaches, how you're building the offensive ecosystem becomes the biggest question for me. And I think that they've done a consistently good job during McDermott's tenure at doing that. So the offense, I feel very good about and have felt very good about for a defensive-minded guy, which is always a question. The defense has been excellent since he got there. It's been really, really good.

Over the last five years, only the Patriots have a better EPA per play on defense than Sean McDermott's bills. And if you're going to be a defensive-minded head coach, I hope that you can get that shit in order. And I think he's done a really good job of that. And the last part of this is he is consistently putting his team in good decisions or putting his team in good spots with the decision making that happens. So they added more win probability via fourth down decisions than any team in the league last year. And if you go back several years, they're consistently going forward on a fourth down when they should, managing the games in ways that they should. And that's

what a head coach is. Those are his three jobs if you're a defensive-minded head coach. You're making in-game decisions. You're in charge of hiring on the offensive side of the ball. And can you be somebody that consistently makes your defense really good? And he's done that. This has been a really successful organization over the last few years. And he's not a dynamic personality. You know, obviously we've talked about some strained metaphors.

You know, there have been some issues with things he's done in the past, all of that. But I think in some ways what he has done there has become underrated because of some of those louder bits of dissension, we'll say, over the last couple years. So I was surprised, too, but I had him at eight in this exercise in front of a couple guys that I kind of thought

I would have ahead of him when I started. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thought experience. I didn't have him clustered here, but again, I, and I would, I think I would push back a little that the defensive head coach only has three jobs. I think the culture building talent identification

on both sides of the ball. I mean, that can be where we sometimes see defensive personnel stretched kind of thin is when they do have to step into those rooms and can they do it. You know, obviously working with Brandon Bean is really good for Sean McDermott.

Having a previous relationship with Brandon Bean dating back to their time in Carolina and even before that, coming into Buffalo and being on one accord right away, identify the quarterback, find the quarterback, and build everything else around that quarterback.

That's a soft. I think that's a good plan. That also, to me, takes some of the pressure off of a defensive head coach, especially in the earlier days. I think the things that they did collectively to continue Josh Allen's development and trajectory into being like one of the most fun quarterbacks we've seen in recent history and certainly one of the best quarterbacks currently playing. That's also impressive. So I don't want to undersell Sean McDermott's role in any of those things. I, I do, I would say I would push back a little bit in terms of some of the coaches who maybe have been doing that longer, a little bit longer than he has.

I look at like the Mike Tomlins of the world where always has a great defense is never actually a bad team. Can be questionable sometimes, like have a little diciness and also doing that without having the answer at quarterback in these recent years. And also, you know, some of the, some of the onus does fall on that coach for not identifying that quarterback or not helping to identify that quarterback. So it's all, this is where things get a little bit nuanced and a little bit convoluted. But I think for me, like, it's not that I have a huge argument against it. I just thought that other people, particularly with some of their, the style at which they have decided to operate as an organization, as a staff. sort of meets the league in terms of like where some of the trends are going right now. I think that's fair.

But Sean McDermott has been doing it for a few years at this point. It's more about results that it is about projecting forward. I think that's why I was swayed that way is because they've just, they've been so consistently good at building this. Yeah. And I think that's where we looked at that this is fun because this is where it's slightly starts to alter because I looked at it is if you were going to pick tomorrow and build for the next 10 years, who are you picking?

Like that's literally, that's. literally how I looked at it. And I think that's totally fair. And I think if you look at that way, I get it. Well, you can think of, you can argue for and against, I think. And with Sean, like, again, I'm not pushing back necessarily against putting him here because his results have been impressive over the last couple of years. And also I think, you know, his own development as a coach in terms of kind of coming out

of his shell a little bit when he was the D.C. and in Carolina and then understanding what it was going to have to take to lead an organization. And then some of his, obviously, his, you know, mistakes and flaws, like, becoming very public. And then some of the bumps along the way being what they have been. But the bills are now a tough out. They're always a tough out. I think if you were going to say, find me a coach who's going to build a team that will be a tough out every single year because they will sort of embody his own toughness, Sean McDermott is one of those few coaches that you would pick.

What number are we at? Because I'm all, I'm scrolling around. I don't know my list. We're at nine. Oh, I don't know if you're going to like my pick. You might like my pick. I don't know if you're going to like my pick. I'm scared now.

There's going to be... No, I'm really interested in it. This is also a little aggressive. I picked Kevin O'Connell. That's not surprising. I do not have him in my top ten, but he was right on the edge. He's actually my first guy off. So I don't think that's aggressive at all.

Because I almost put him in there, and we'll get to the reason that. why I didn't and why I had like a couple guys ahead of him, but he was right on the edge for me. Yeah, it's an interesting, this was where it got tough. Because again, I have like a cluster here of a lot of people who I think should have cracked the top 10. Like I have Mike Tomlin in my top 10, for example. I did not have Sean McDermott in my top 10, but I did put Mike Tomlin in there. With Kevin O'Connell, it's, again, I looked at it through the lens of you're an owner, you're going to build a team. You want a team that's going to be, you know, you want a successful team,

you want your head coach to be in place for the next 10 years. And so I picked Kevin because of his understanding of the quarterback position. Not just as understanding and communication

of the quarterback position in a league that is investing in quarterbacks at a higher rate than ever before, more talented, dynamic, all the way up, ranging up into transcendent. And then also

quarterbacks are around. Quarterbacks are faster. They're smarter. They're stronger. stronger. They are, and, you know, I hopefully like, you know, the Kurt Warner's of the world don't hear this and push back on me. Like, the old guard is great too. But in terms of just the things that we now know about what quarterbacks can do and the things that we now know about the lifespan of quarterbacks and the things that we now know about how to be successful at the position and what

it can really mean to your organization if you are successful at that position for even five years, less so 10 versus if you are not. We also know we've seen now what a real quarterback developer paired with a great system paired with the right, you know, quarterback or the right guy that fits you as a coach. We've seen how those players can thrive. There's several examples of those who are, you know, racking up the EPA per play in this league right now. I think that's where I give the edge to Kevin O'Connell because he understands the quarterback position on a level that few coaches do. And I'm not saying that just because he played. I'm saying like he is a massive geek when it comes to understanding the quarterback position and has been that way for a long time,

still is that way. And I watched him bridge any sort of gap in communication, even between two of the really most renowned minds in football, which were Matthew Stafford and Sean McFay, translating a language one person had in one building and a language another person had in another building and marrying the two together, I mean, what the Rams were able to accomplish in 2021, that's Kevin O'Connell's fingerprints are all over that

and his communication ability and his ability as a teacher to reach a quarterback who he was the same age at, as I think, at that time, like who had seen it all, had done it all, but to reach that player and then also to bridge the three of them together in what became a really interesting, really important schematic twist on what the old offense looked like and to do that without like a run game for most of the year. So I watched him teach. And I think that's where for me, I mean, it was solid in my head that he would be a head coach, you know, the second I got to listen to those things. But also to watch him kind of roll through the quarterbacks that he has. And it has not been pretty at times. And the team has not, they've just been sort of washed in chaos at times. But I think one thing has stayed consistent and he's reached every single quarterback. You could see where the work and the teaching has come in with every single quarterback, even on disastrous games, even in failure. You can see

where some of the principles and some of the work and some of the methods apply. So if my parameter that I set, and I'm trying not to move goalposts here, I told you that being in the show, I'm trying to stick with this parameter of who do you want to be coaching your team for the next 10 years? This is why I put him at this pick because I think he will reach the quarterback. And if you can reach the quarterback and you can solve that question, you can build the ship around the quarterback. All that is totally fair. And that's why he was like my first guy off. When we talk about the rest of the list, yeah, I had him at 11th and I had him in his own spot at 11th, because he's a I think you could have put him any spot between like eight and eleven.

Yeah. I mean, it's just for all the things that you said. And I think that being able to move off of the defensive coordinator and hire Brian Flores going into year two and being able to see what that could do for your defense and a young defense that needed that sort of presence and that sort of unconventional approach, that is a level of foresight that I want out of my head coach. In so many ways, he is a modern NFL head coach. even the way that he becomes like the face of the franchise in quiet ways, like the way that

he's out as a forward-facing element of who the Vikings are right now, that's not the most important consideration when you're hiring a head coach is who's going to do good marketing for you. But I do think that he embodies that in a very specific way that aligns with the demands of the job in 2024. And I think for those reasons and everything you said about the quarterback, I think that's right. The two things I would say, it's only been a couple of things.

years. And two, I think that the ideas of what the offense should be and how to solve some of the offensive problems that they've had, the explanations for how that was going to happen have always sounded good. In practice, they haven't necessarily come into view. The run game specifically. I think that they're thoughtful and proactive about how they're going to take this where they need to, but I think that there's been a gap between the plan and the execution over the last two years. that's the last thing that I will say. That's the one tiny thing that helped me back a little bit is that you look at it. It's like, well, they've been like 18th in EPA for play on offense over the last two years.

And that's when Kirk's been healthy. You know, there's still a slight gap between idea and execution and an idea of what the Vikings can be and what they have been offensively specifically that I think I can't quite bridge that gap yet. And that's why I just push them down a little bit further than some of these other guys. Yeah, but I would say if through that, That lens specifically, Sean McVeigh would not be in the top seven. If it were just looking at that lens specifically, because 2022 is a disaster. Yes, there were injuries, but his offense was behind.

You go look at some of those early games what they were trying to do. He was behind. But they did bridge the gap eventually. They eventually did get there. Sure. That's the thing. So I'm not looking at it through the lens of like that specific lens. I'm more, I think I'm looking at it more broadly and then also into future potential based on foundational

elements of what coaching is and like what um you can see the theory even if the execution and the like you can kind of see where they're trying to get they just haven't gotten there yet and i think you know you can similar to sean in 2022 and 2020 you know you can you can say okay well they've had uh basically chaos at one position or two positions and for that reason everyone's patching the tire fire at that point everyone's like slap you know the the the meme of the guy with the giant tub of water and he like puts a patched duct tape over and it's like fixed you know that's happening if if that happens at any one position that's where everyone's attention goes to and so it's not that that's not a good reason to knock him down i do think that's a good reason to to knock him down but looking

at it solely through that lens and not uh globally in terms of you can see where they're trying to go you can see what you could you could see where they were trying to go on defense and then eventually they got there it took an eagoless move, in my opinion, to make that higher similar. We're talking about Andy Reid letting his DC cook. Like, you got to let Brian Flores cook. And cook he did. So you have to make those types of eagoless decisions at times if you're going to be a really great head coach. And we've seen that with some of these great head coaches. But you can see where some of the steps are trying to be installed. And you could see the direction that they're going into.

So again, looking at it through a global lens, and my parameter is of if you were going to plug this guy into a building tomorrow and say, take the keys kid and drive, and you want that person, what qualities that you hold most valuable and most crucial. For me, the quarterback is right at the top, reaching the quarterback, teaching the quarterback, developing the quarterback. even last year when they cycled through so many, even fielding a functional at times, very dysfunctional, but at times functional passing game, even installing with a quarterback and then a different quarterback and then a different quarterback week over week over week, that's an enormous effort that requires completely adjusting and altering,

again, an instilled language that has existed, you know, for years. And so I think that that type of malleability and that type, type of adjustability in reaching different types of players at the most important position in football, that to me stood head and shoulders above any missing potential that still has to manifest. And that's how I think that's how I look, well, I don't think I know, that's how I looked at a lot of these coaches that I put in these positions. Yeah, I had a minute it's my first one off. And so my last one here, which I think this is the 10th pick. Yeah. I think we've counted right. I'm picking Mike Tomlin.

Yay, good, because I had him here. So the reason that I had Sean McDermott ahead of Mike Tom, because you mentioned this, is that Mike Tomlin has not gotten the offensive coordinator right. He hasn't. That is, when you talk about the quarterback being paramount here, and I understand they haven't had the right quarterback. They haven't given their quarterback a chance over the last few years.

And the only reason I'm even comfortable kind of putting Mike Tomlin on this list right now is because I think Arthur Smith is the correct sort of hire and the correct sort of direction, even if he's not, it's not gangbusters. It is the, you hire somebody who has done this job effectively in the past to do this job for you. And so we'll see how that goes. Obviously, the quarterback is still a question. But I'm really hung up on their inability to get this right or even look in the correct spots over the last few years. And that's why I almost kept Mike Tom on off.

But I go back to this setting the feeling of what your team plays like and what your team feels like. he does that as well or better than anybody. That defense is elite every single year. And their ability to kind of set that and have that be the foundation of who they are has been really impressive over the last several seasons. And really since he got there. And just the way they practice, the way it feels there, he has been able to instill a certain attitude and a certain personality for what this team is, especially on that side

of the ball. And I don't think that that can go overlooked. So the consistency and every layer to that, I think is what ultimately puts him on here. Only the Patriots have a better EPA for play on defense than the Steelers. That's it. Only the Patriots. And they're consistently competitive.

They consistently perform better on that side of the ball and they probably should, given some of the talent deficiencies. I mean, there have been stretches where it's like, who's playing corner for the Steelers? It doesn't matter. They're going to be good on that side of the ball. It's the offensive decisions and the in-game decisions that ultimately push him down a little bit further

than somebody of his track record might deserve in an exercise. like this, but I still think that he deserves to be on this list, even with some of those things holding me back. Yeah, obviously, I didn't look specifically at the quarterback question when it comes to him because of his history there. And then also, they're in like this new era of trying to figure it out. I think much more important right now.

I mean, the quarterback obviously the most important. But in terms of this exercise, much more important to look at was the OC, just like you're saying, that is questionable in terms of the decision making, talent identification. even the, what they say they're going to do versus what they actually do or do not do has been an issue there at times. And so I think like it's the difference between someone explained this to me, which was when one of the previous coordinators was there, it's the difference between motioning just to motion and motioning with an intent to sell a different alignment, spacing, create a new gap to sell the why of the play. that's the difference between an offensive coordinator that is not getting the job done in that space and needs to, and someone who can truly bring an offense to life and make it three-dimensional. Less tortured metaphor. I finally did it. But I agree with you. I have, Mike Tom is number nine for me in my top 10.

And you hear constantly how people, coaches, players, front office people around the league, talk about him as one of maybe three coaches who, if they picked up the phone and called you and you were a free agent and he said, come play for me, you would be on a plane, no question. If you weren't already there already knocking on his door, that type of understanding of what it takes to sustain a culture. And we're looking at globally as an organization, you know, what it takes to not just build, but sustain. That is an absolute X factor that, you cannot quantify that, I mean, you probably could quantify it if you looked at some of the, some of the free agents and all that, but like, that you can't actually, you either have it or you

don't. And if you don't have it, you spend a lot of time and a lot of resources trying to find the little things that build up to having some version that equals it, right? And you still don't have it. And so I think that that is where Mike Tomlin certainly stands apart. His understanding of what makes defense is special, how to get players in positions to be successful, even at times missing personnel, even at times rotating through injuries, dealing with things,

an offense that time and again set that defense up for failure. And still, it was like, if you can score, this is a half-full, half-empty sort of test. Like, you could say, if you score 14 points, you will beat the Pittsburgh Steelers. At certain points of this, of the career, right? Because they weren't scoring points on offense. But also, if you're saying that,

you're in for a fucking dog fight. Yeah, that's how it is every week. It will take everything you've got simply to get to 14 points. So it's like you could look at that as a positive or a negative. It's both. But I think that if he does and perhaps he has and yeah, like you said, Arthur Smith did some great things as a coordinator. Some people are well suited for that role. And, and, and, especially he, Arthur Smith is tough-minded, I think, and stubborn and also very creative. And I think that will thrive with Mike Tomlin's personality type, frankly. I think that will thrive under that building under that roof. And I do think that that will be good for the quarterbacks who are there as well.

So I think this is a wait and see for me. But in terms of what Mike Tomlin does bring, what he has brought every single year, year over year, not just a guy who can make. maintain a culture, but a guy whose defense is going to kick you in the mouth and then, like, step over you. Like, it's that, that is, and like, and is always incredibly impressive schematically. Like, that, that is what he brings. All right.

So that's the top 10. Let's list off your big board here so we can get to, like, a best of the rest near the end of your top 10 that we didn't get to. Okay. And listener, please keep in mind. I have second guessed most of it. I've second guessed all of it. You made me feel very bad about my Sean McDermott pick.

We're not going to talk about it anymore. I have a very expressive face, so I'm trying to work on that. And I like Sean. I've known Sean for forever. I think he's a great coach, but I was surprised by that. But you were surprised by Demiko, so that's okay. Okay, I have Sean McVeigh, Matt LaFleur, Andy Reid. And by the way, I wanted to put Andy Reid it too,

but please keep in mind, listener, before you come yell at me, of the parameters that I was looking at this through, which I've said too many times at this point. Okay, Andy Reid, Dan Campbell, D'Meiko Ryan's, Kyle Shanahanan. Oh, yeah, D'Meico Ryan's, Kyle Shanahan, John Harbaugh, Kevin O'Connell. I know. That surprised me just now, actually. Maybe I messed that up.

Mike Tomlin. And then I have Mike McDaniel at 10, but Kevin Stefansky is right up there with him. Perfect. Here's my top 10. I had Andy Reid, Kyle Shanahan at – or excuse me, Andy Reid, Shaw McVey at 2, Kyle Shanahan at 3, Matt LaFlewer at 4, John Harbaugh at 5, Dan Campbell at 6, Sean McDermin at 7, Sean McDermott at 7, Mike Tom 1 at 8,

and I had Mike McDaniel at 9 and Kevin Stofansky at 10. So let's do very brief Mike McDaniel Daniel and Kevin Stifansky conversations. We talk about the quarterback. The fact that Mike McDaniel is getting MVP-level play out of Tua, who looked like he couldn't stick in the league under the previous coaching staff, that's what's important to me.

And we're going to talk about the Dolphins this week on our AFCslingering Questions podcast. And I have some issues and some concerns about why that offense has flamed out, late in the season over the last couple years. But I am so impressed at where they look for answers and how they look for answers and pivot points in accordance with the identity that they have on offense.

Their ability to be like, all right, here's a new way for us to throw route to the middle of the field. You could think that they have to live inside this box and that's a problem. But their ability to make the box as devastating as possible over and over again, that's a skill. And I think his ability to tap into that and be as creative and as innovative as he has

while trying to live in that sort of speed-based middle of the field world, it's amazing. And so that's why, even if they've run into some roadblocks, I have a lot of faith in their ability to kind of keep pushing this thing forward because I've looked at how proactive they continue to be. Yeah, I think the difference between describing a rock star brilliant offensive coordinator, which who would do all of those things. And a really, really good head coach, which I believe Mike McDaniel to be,

is, again, the way he reached the quarterback specifically as a person and as a player, the way that he empowered the quarterback as a person and as a player, but also the way he reaches the rest of the roster as well, as people, as players. It is, I was in Miami this last year working on a project about that short out motion that they run, which drove everybody nuts. And going in that locker room and seeing some familiar face, is good to see Jalen Ramsey again.

But like the, they know, similar, we talked about Andy Reid earlier, they know that he will show up every day and he will give them the answers to the test in a way that makes them feel confident, empowered, and valued. And Robert, you and I've talked about this before. Mike's lived a life that a lot of people in this league either quietly have or haven't in terms of some of the things that he's been through and some of the things, some of the life stuff that he's, that has shifted and shaped his perspective on how to be and how he wants other people to feel around him. And I can't undersell that. Again, I'm looking at this through parameters of especially quarterback and certainly of what it means to be potentially a 10-year head coach. coach versus some of the flash in the pan stuff.

And there is no shallowness to that. Because you have all the schematic juice that you could want out of Mike McDaniel. You just do. But you could have had that as a coordinator. The thing that does differentiate him is, again, what he established as the identity and going full send into that identity, committing to something simple yet really effective, which is speed, but then understanding how to manipulate that speed in every single part of that roster to where if you're a defense, you're practicing against it every day at pace. If you're

special teams, you're practicing against it at pace. You have different things, edges that you're trying to create quiet edges that are very loud on game days, little wrinkles and things that you're just fiddling with and tweaking. And your players come along with you because they see it. They buy it. They understand the why of it. And you make them feel valued while they do it. And I think that that is what can differentiate, again, someone who's a lifetime offensive coordinator, a very good one, and a lifetime head coach and a very, very good one. And for those reasons, and probably more that I forgot to mention, he's in my top 10. And he barely edged out Kevin Stefansky, who I know you have a lot of history with, so I want to give you the floor on that one. But Kevin Stefanski

is just like really consistent to me. He's smart. He's smart. He's calm. He's consistent. He's stable. He's a lifer. You know, like he just, he's got to. He's just, he's got. everything that you want, you know, in a head coach. He doesn't have very many of the things that you don't want in a head coach. And so he fits right around here for me. Everything you said about Mike, I think is spot on. The thing I always come back to with him is the first conversation I ever had with him. His focus on his job is to make the job easier for the players. I have to come every day and prove my worth to the players. That's how you stick. If that's your mindset, that's how you stick for a really long time. It's not about these shooting star schematic things. It's about that being

the foundation of who you want to be every day in the job. And I think his willingness and ability to lean into that is why I would feel comfortable betting on him. With Kevin, it's the word you said is consistency. The two things I had in my first note are humility and consistency. His ability to be steady and stable no matter what's going on, I mean, they had five offensive tackles last year. And it's never, woe is me.

It's never, there's never a complaint about, I can't believe this is happening. It's always this is the job. This is what it is. And I think every year he understands, I don't know what's going to happen and that's okay. And there is truly an egoist approach to the way that he goes about the job. And I think that you see that. You see that in the people that he hires. You see that in the way they've been able to pay assistance. I don't think a lot of head coaches or there are some head coaches who I don't think would be comfortable with our offensive line coach making millions and millions of dollars a year and having that sort of profile within the building. He doesn't give it. He doesn't give a shit. You know, like he just doesn't care. And the building. to kind of identify Jim Schwartz is like this is the pivot that we need. That's what being a head coach is. So he's just somebody that, and just consistently making the offense easier on his guys with the way that they build it.

Screens, play action. It's not the sexiest thing in the world, but I think that it's the bedrock of what consistently makes offense easy. The Jacoby Percet season looms large in my mind, like what they were able to do with him. And obviously, it's been an adventurer with what they've had to do on the field

with the Sean Watson, and it wasn't always pretty with Baker Mayfield. But I think going back to that, humility, inconsistency, he's set up well and has the makeup to be good at the job for a long period of time. And that's why I also had him in my top ten. I couldn't find a gripe with Kevin Stefansky. Like with some of these coaches, I could say, oh, well, there's a reason why I pushed him down. I couldn't really find anything with him, which doesn't immediately qualify him to rank above in terms of the positive qualities of some of the other people that I've listed. But I think it's really

striking that I, you know, you can't really find much to complain about with him or to even like nitpick about with him. And like I even wrote it down. You said it a few minutes ago, but I just said, I bring up the consistency again. There's always chaos around the Browns, but Stefanski brings stability, problem solving, and a quiet glue mentality while also trying to innovate on offense as he goes, regardless of what is happening. And that's not always going to look like the new cutting edge thing, but it is going to still be something that works. And I think that is the differentiator there. Also, So I did mix up D'Amico and Kyle. I had them numbered wrong and listed in the – I was like, I shocked myself when I was like, what the – yeah.

I mean, no offense to anybody, but like, yeah, that was a flip them, yeah. So honorable mention here, I had Kevin O'Connell's my 10B. And then so the other two guys I had in a section all their own after that. And it's kind of like a TBD thing because it was after one year are D'Amico Ryan's and Shane Steakin. Because I had Shane Steakin down there, yeah. Yeah, I think he's going to be really good at this, what they did on offense last year, what the U. Eagles looked like without him last year. You talk about an ability to innovate and kind of step outside of what his history has been

offensively and what both the Eagles and Colts have looked like, energy, what he's bringing into play. He got out of Gardner Minshu, but it's been a year. So I just can't do it with him or D'Amico yet because of the body of work, but they were in their own little section right after those guys. Jim Harbaugh, same kind of deal. It's like, I think Jim Harbaugh is going to do a really good job in L.A. I haven't seen him be an NFL head coach in a decade, so I can't put him on here.

and that that's really it. I'm surprised Sean Payton wasn't on here, but I'm concerned with the direction that that's going. That's really the only other name that I would throw out. Other than that, I feel okay, despite really second-guessing myself with my Sean McDermott thing. But again, I bet out of the body of work. It's all right.

I think you've made a good argument for all of your picks anyway. So Sean Payton is in my top 15, but he did not crack my top 10. I do have Stuyken at 12. I had Mike McCarthy, like, right at the middle. because it just feels like that's the right place. Yeah, I think you'd probably put him at like 16, which is probably where I would have had him.

Yeah. And also one thing I will say is I did not necessarily rank the guys who are incoming first year. For me, I wanted them to all at least have at least one year. So I kind of have them clustered like off to the side. Not in Shanahan world. Shanahan's on Shanahan Island over here. in like this like island like just encircled with ravens and clouds and also sunshine at the same time, which makes no sense.

So you got to kick me off here at some point because the metaphors are going to keep coming. Well, that's all. We'll use that as the time to do it. So that, uh, you got to kick me out. You got to kick me out of the room. That is all we got. Jordan sincerely appreciate the time. This was very, very fun.

I think a lot of insight that people are going to appreciate. So thanks for doing it. Thanks for having me. All right, guys, that's all we got. Sincerely appreciate everybody listening. We will be back a little bit later this week. We're actually only going to do three shows this week. It's going to be our normal Tuesday, Thursday, Friday schedule.

We're not going to squeeze another one in because it's the middle of June, and that doesn't seem necessary. So we're going to have our AFCE East lingering questions show on Thursday, and they're going to come back with a second lingering question show about the AFC West on Friday. So be on the lookout for both of those for now. That's all we got. Appreciate all of you listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.